Chapter 7 Uncanny politics Natalia Romé The current conditions of our social life have proved to be particularly harmful to our mental health. Social studies have made use of various theories of the subject and subjectivity in an attempt to describe and explain these phenomena. The conjunction is not simple; a vast range of contributions is settled between more or less constructivist options of the subjective and more or less subjectivist versions of the social, with risks ranging from the extreme sociologization of psychic life – without rest or unconscious – to the psychologization of social life – without the capacity to identify the complexity of historical determinations that shape it. In the 1960s, Louis Althusser developed his theory of ideology in order to theorize the complex mediations that connect the social historical with the unconscious psychic. The concept of ideology was, nevertheless, discarded in the following decades by various theoretical traditions that preferred to work with the categories of discourse, performativity and identity, among others. However, these traditions have shown their limits when dealing with the current subjective configurations in which the dimension of unconscious affect is shown with particular symptomatic force. With the honourable exception of the developments carried forward by the Slovenian school, by Slavoj Žižek, Alenka Zupancic and Mladen Dolar, among others, and by certain critical and political readings of psychoanalysis, such as those developed by Ian Parker, David Pavón Cuellar and Jorge Alemán, among others, today there are relatively few theoretical tools capable of thinking about forms of social bonding increasingly characterized by rigid attachments to belief systems, reactionary segregationism and various forms of contempt for others and for oneself. In this context, going back on Althusser’s tracks does not seem a bad idea. In the following pages, I intend to explore some aspects of his work concerning the links between ideology, the unconscious and politics which, as I understand Political Jouissance_Book.indb 82 Political Jouissance_Book.indb 82 01-06-2024 17:06:45 01-06-2024 17:06:45